I am a product of 1964

BThe United States helped create a miliary dictarorship in Brazil and then they want us removed from the US when we are immigrants product of their destruction.

1964 - 2025 (61 year old lit fuse)

I wasn’t alive during the 1964 coup in Brazil, but I’m living proof of what U.S. foreign policy does to people like me. Most Americans have no idea that the United States helped overthrow Brazil’s democratically elected president, João Goulart, just because he wanted to push land reform, tax big foreign companies, and give workers more rights. Sound familiar?

The U.S. deemed João Goulart a threat. Said he was too close to Communism, even though he wasn’t. So the CIA backed a military coup, coordinated with Brazilian generals, and helped install a brutal military dictatorship that would rule the country for 21 years. They tortured dissidents, disappeared students, and turned Brazil into another pawn in the Cold War chess game.

That coup set off decades of repression, economic inequality, and political violence. It also laid the groundwork for why so many Brazilians — including me — ended up in the United States. I was adopted out of a country that had been hollowed out by dictatorship, and raised here like this was home. We were robbed of our culture and our natural resources to benefit those in the United States. I was told to be grateful. But what does it mean to be grateful when the very government that brought you here now treats you like a threat?

“Don’t tell me you respect me if you don’t even dare to use terms that humanize me. We are not illegal aliens. This destructive narrative makes it easier for you to rob us of our justice to benefit your greed. See us. Hear us. Listen to us. Respect Us.” - Adriano Kalin

Now, I watch as politicians vilify immigrants like me. They talk about deporting naturalized citizens. They act like we’re invaders as if we showed up uninvited. But the truth is, we’re here because this country showed up in ours first. The U.S. didn’t just visit Brazil, it helped tear down our democracy and handed power to generals with guns.

Not to mention, this is not an isolated event. This has happened time & time again when the United States has interfered with other countries’ politics and ravished them of their dignity.

Need some more examples? Here: Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Cuba, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, and Haiti. In the Middle East and North Africa: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Palestine. In Asia and the Pacific: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, and Pakistan. In Africa: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Angola, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, and Ethiopia. In Eastern Europe and elsewhere: Ukraine, Serbia, Greece, Bosnia, Georgia, and Kosovo.

This country can’t destroy nations abroad and then feign shock when people flee the mess. It’s not a mystery. It’s policy. And I’m the living, breathing outcome of that policy.

All photographs are copyrighted by ©Adriano Kalin.

They want to erase people like me, but they don’t want to talk about why we’re here in the first place. I didn’t just land here by chance. I’m here because of 1964. Because of João Goulart. Because of a military regime, the U.S. helped build. I carry that history in my body, in my passport, in my citizenship status that still feels conditional.

This isn’t just history. This is my life. And I refuse to be silent about it.